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4th BC Century Defensive Wall Unearthed
An anonymous reader writes "Yahoo News is reporting that Greek archaeologists have discovered a 2,600 meter defensive wall whose design was 'inspired by Alexander the Great.' In addition to the wall itself 4th-century BC bronze coins were also found inside the structure. From the article: 'The discovery was made in the archaeological site of Dion, an ancient fortified city and key religious sanctuary of the Macedonian civilization, which ruled much of Greece until Roman times.'"
the wall seems to head in a straight line towards a neighbouring enemy city. periodically there are areas where sand seems to be turned to glass by large electric discharges. documents from the area refer to multiple "hands of Zeus", "wall whoring" and "gay lamer noob faggots".
Does this wall protect against trojans? Did they close any unnecessary services and make sure it was well patched at all times? What was it protecting, an abacus? So many questions...
Upon his death his generals squabbled over the conqured lands, individually taking control of various areas. The Ptolemy reign of Egypt ended with the conquest of Egypt by Julius Ceasar and his taking of Cleopatra as his lover and mother of their child.
The true legacy of Alexander was the Hellenization of the ancient world. The ancient Greek culture was idealized and emulated by the Macedonians, (hence Aristotle as teacher to Alexander), and Alexander spread the idealized version of the ancient Greek culture throughout the lands he conqured.
"Academicians are more likely to share each other's toothbrush than each other's nomenclature."
Cohen
To nitpick: Macedonians wanted to be Greeks, but "True Greeks" looked down on them as barbarians.
I knew it was only a matter of time until someone came with the Greek nationalist view. Too bad that no one outside of Greece cares. Yes, Alexander and his father spoke Greek, but the simple fact of the matter is that only the upper crust of Macedonia was educated in the Greek language. The peons spoke only their local vernacular, an Indo-European language too far removed from Greek for mutual intelligibility. Archaeological evidence shows that Macedonia had its own pottery and jewelry traditions which were different than those of Greece, so the culture was not Greek. Saying that Macedonia was a part of the Greek nation is like calling present-day India part of England just because the upper classes there speak English.
It's true--Macedonia was a city state. However, from an Athenian's perspective, the Macedonians certainly were *another* people because they considered them barbarians (hence I leave out the term "civilisation"). Of course, Aristotle himself was born in Macedonia, and Alexander would go on to conquer them. Probably as much jealousy and ill-will in the Athenian sentiment as there is truth to it.
Myself included, many nerds have an interest in classical civilisations stretching back to their studies of Latin at school.
Nerdom extends beyond the realm of computers.
I couldnt think of anything funny to say about this new wall, so I figured I'd post something serious.
Wrong. The region that was identified by the ancients as Macedonia is currently split between Greece, the Republic of Macedonia, and Bulgaria. Yes, a large part is in Greece, but not all.
Wrong as well. When the Slavs invaded, they were a minority who seized power and slowly imposed their language on the majority. The people living in the Balkans today are the descendents of the inhabitants who lived there thousands of years ago.
How did they find out this? Was there a writing on one of the rocks? Something like:
(c) 400 BC - Patent pending - A. The Great
People like Napoleon or Hitler get a lot of style points reduced because of the short time(historically speaking) it took to beat them.
There *is* a difference, you know.
Don't think of it as a flame---it's more like an argument that does 3d6 fire damage
I'm pretty sure that the millions of descendents of Ghengis Khan would disagree. He ruled a far bigger empire than either Alexander or Napoleon. He did conquer almost all of Asia and part of Europe, including present day China, Russia, Turkey, Poland, Hungary, Iran, and Iraq.
The Revolution. Now available as a convienent six tape series from PBS.
This article is talking about the 4th Century B.C. or B.C.E., however you want to designate it.
And some of us just love building city walls, fortifying veteran pikemen then wandering off and whiping the Sioux off the map. Damned Sioux *shakes fist*
Czech language for absolute beginners
That's not a good reason to leave out the term civilization. The ancient Greeks called any people who didn't have Greek culture barbarians unless they were obviously even more sophisticated in many ways, such as the ancient Egyptians.
I dream of a better world... one in which chickens can cross roads without their motives being questioned.
On the other hand, it is precisely because there are people who do hand in such amazing discoveries that so much is known about the ancient world. There are many sites, throughout Europe, which were discovered precisely because of a reported find leading to a study and finally an excavation.
I have often been critical of archaeologists, and the current state of Italy's archaeological remains doesn't give me much confidence in the competence of world heritage organizations either. Many of the major sites are at the point of collapse, one section of wall at a major site DID collapse last year and would have killed a few hundred tourists if it had happened during the day. Emergency repairs, required within the next year or two, will require between ten to twenty times the money budgetted for ALL Itallian archaeology and maintenance for the next decade, simply in order to prevent massive casualties.
Discoveries are of the utmost importance, proper excavation and documentation are vital, but all of that is useless if proper preservation of finds is ignored. The exceptionally fine ancient monument returned from Italy - a massive obelisk that had been plundered during World War II and was in exceptionally good condition, was smashed into three pieces in order to return it on the cheap. If this is the way things are going to happen in future, the Rosetta Stone will be returned to Egypt as a fine powder - the Egyptians can always glue the grains together again, after all.
Sorry if I sound cynical - well, maybe not entirely sorry. I have a very hard time reconciling demonstrable gross incompetence and money hoarding with any kind of respect for heritage or history. As I've said often enough before, we have many possible futures. Futures are a dime a dozen. We can take our pick of those. However, we only ever have one past. Lose that, and it's gone. You don't get another go. Whatever is destroyed is lost and can never be replaced.
Hey, for some things, that probably doesn't matter too much, and there's just too much history to preserve everything 100% from the information level through to the artifacts themselves. The world is only so big and we're running out of room as it is. Besides which, it is really the information that matters anyway, provided you have gathered as much as is practical and lose as little as possible.
In the "perfect world" (at least, perfect in my highly opinionated world view) no effort would be spared to gather all the information that technology can extract, with that information distributed as widely and as freely as the available technology supports. After that, artifacts become relatively unimportant and sites become more useful for tourism than for study. Provided they don't fall down.
I'm not seeing that kind of study going on, though. The new burial site that has been found, for example - there should be plenty of DNA and mDNA that can be extracted for testing to get an idea of the ethnic makeup of the people of the time. They could even put the mDNA markers up on one of the numerous DNA family history sites, to see if living relatives exist and to encourage a greater participation by average folk in the whole archaeology thing. People will be far more willing to invest a little extra time and money on a project if they feel involved - even if only highly superficially - than they will if it is purely seen as the idle musings of some University types with a trowel fetish.
The pendant is another good example. Gold i
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
Quote: "ATHENS (AFP) - Greek archaeologists excavating an ancient Macedonian city in the foothills of Mount Olympus have uncovered a 2,600-metre defensive wall whose design was "inspired by the glories of Alexander the Great," the site supervisor said Thursday.
Built into the wall were dozens of fragments from statues honouring ancient Greek gods, including Zeus, Hephaestus and possibly Dionysus, archaeologist Dimitrios Pantermalis told a conference in the northern port city of Salonika, according to the Athens News Agency.
Early work on the fortification is believed to have begun under Cassander, the fourth-century BC king of Macedon who succeeded Alexander the Great. Cassander is believed to have ordered the murders of Alexander's mother, wife and infant son, Pantermalis said.
The wall's design suggests that it was "inspired by the glory of Alexander the Great in the East," as the young king sought to emulate grandiose structures encountered during his campaigns, Pantermalis told the conference.
Bronze coins from the period of Theodosius, the 4th-century AD Byzantine Emperor who abolished the ancient Olympic Games, were also found hidden inside the wall.
The discovery was made in the archaeological site of Dion, an ancient fortified city and key religious sanctuary of the Macedonian civilisation, which ruled much of Greece until Roman times.
Prior excavations at Dion have already revealed two theatres, a stadium, and shrines to a variety of gods, including Egyptian deities Sarapis, Isis and Anubis, whose influence in the Greek world grew in the wake of Alexander's conquest of Egypt." End quote.
It sort of answers it all doesn't it?
Don't be apathetic. Procrastinate!
The inhabitants of the Balkans maintain the same general set of genes that other Europeans share, even definitely autochthonous peoples like the Basques. That is how we know that invaders e.g. the Indo-Europeans were minorities compared to the peoples who eventually adopted their language. One of the big sea changes in archaeology over the past few decades is a recognition that there were no truly large population shifts in recent antiquity. So, we can honestly claim that the inhabitants of Macedonia today are, excepting the Roma, Jews, and occasional Turks who trickled in, the same people as a couple of thousand years ago.
For those of us in the old world, I reckon the possible Alexander connection is the interesting bit. Maybe a re-titling of the headline to reflect this? 4th century BCE walls and remains? got them all over the place. Maybe the date is more exciting to folks whose archaeological records only stretch back a couple of hundred years ;-)
"News for Greeks"
Whether Alexander was Greek depends on what you consider Greek. You're correct that there is a distinction between classical Greeks (i.e. Athenians, Spartans, and others) and classical Macedonians. However, modern Greeks are actually in large part descendents of Macedonians and Hellenized non-Greeks; it's not as if modern Greeks are somehow purebred descendents of ancient Athenians.
To the extent that the Macedonian Empire created much of what would become the "Hellenic World", Alexander was certainly Greek almost definitionally.
10 PRINT CHR$(205.5+RND(1)); : GOTO 10
(Flipping trhough Payers Handbook) Are you sure they are'nt copper or gold pieces? If they are bronze, what good are they. (grin)
"Enjoy what you're doing! If it becomes drudgery, you're doing it wrong!" - Jim Butterfield
Linear A and B are used for writing different languages. Linear A, the older of them is in a undeciphered language which is clearly not related to Greek or any other indo-european language. Linear B has clearly been shown to be Greek by Michael Ventris et al. Therefore we can assert that at least the minoan elite spoke Greek.
The first time in modern era that someone spoke of Skopjia/Vardaska as 'Macedonia' was Tito, the communist leader of Yugoslavia. That was in the 40s. The reason that move was made was because Tito wanted Yugoslavia to have access to the Mediterranean sea sometime in the future, when the Communist Empire was to grow.
Tito had no need to make such dubious claim on greek territory as Yugoslavia was never landlocked. I won't refute the possibility that he had other motives, but access to the Mediterranian wasn't one of them.
Actually, several classical sources mention that Macedonians did not, typically, understand Greek. Sure, the upper crust did - it was the language of culture commerce and art. But the rank and file Macedonians, such as those that made up Alexanders personal bodyguard unit, required translators.
There isn't enough of the Macedonian language preserved in extant sources to say for sure what sort of language it was, but it clearly was not Greek, whatever else may or may not have been true of it. And no classical author considered Macedonians to be Greek - while many explicitly classified them as barbarians.
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Friends don't let friends enable ecmascript.
The first Macedonian who could compete in the Olympic games was Alexander's grandfather.
Basically only Greeks could compete in the Olympic Games, so by that token they must've been sufficiently Hellinised so as to warrant participation in the Games.
Later on the Romans were allowed to participate but that's much later.
As to the Macedonians' 'Greekness' personally I imagine they were Hellinised but did maintain some difference.
Plutarch and Arrian (biographers after Alexander's death) both mention instances of when Alexander spoke to his troops or staff officers in Macedonian which couldn't be understood by the Greeks of his court.
One funny thing about Macedonians is that they unlike the Greeks drank their wine straight up without the use of additives (honey, herbs, and water).
Macedonians were to my knowledge not mentioned as participants in the Trojan War whereas Homer mentions all manner of other Greek people from all over the modern day Greek Peninsula and its surrounding islands.
That Alexander spread Greek ideas and culture throughout the Middle East is in fact testament to at least an appreciation of what he learnt under his teacher Aristotle.
Were they Greeks? Probably not
Were they Hellinised? the elite certainly was
Today's Macedonians have little if anything to do at all culturally, or 'ethnically' with the Macedonians of old so there's no reason to discuss that. Far too many of the residents of Greek Macedonia are recent transplants from Asia Minor (1920's) and Hellinised Slavs.
Problem with /. is that the young geeks nowadays aren't nearly geeky enough.
Pining for the fjords